T-Mobile chasing unlimited LTE data "thieves"

T-Mobile USA, will now penalize those subscribers who abuse its unlimited data plans by using tools to "steal" data. It turns out that this "small group" of customers uses "as much as two terabytes of data per month." But all of that data isn't used on smartphones alone; instead, T-Mobile claims that it is used for tethering and hotspot feature.

The company is one of the few phone carriers to still offer an unlimited data plan. Customers who buy "unlimited" high-speed data for smartphones are also given up to 7GB a month for tethering, which lets a phone act as a Wi-Fi hotspot for other devices such as laptops. But some customers are masking their tethering activity and using as much as 2TB in a month, T-Mobile says.

"This week, I am taking aim at a select group of individuals who have actually been stealing data from T-Mobile,"company CEO John Legere wrote in a blog post. "If their activities are left unchecked their actions could eventually have a negative effect on the experience of honest T-Mobile customers."

"Here's what's happening: when customers buy our unlimited 4G LTE plan for their smartphones we include a fixed amount of LTE to be used for tethering (using the "Smartphone Mobile HotSpot" feature), at no extra cost, for the occasions when broadband may not be convenient or available. If customers hit that high-speed tethering limit, those tethering speeds slow down.

If a customer needs more LTE tethering, they can add-on more. Simple. However, these violators are going out of their way with all kinds of workarounds to steal more LTE tethered data. They're downloading apps that hide their tether usage, rooting their phones, writing code to mask their activity, etc. They are "hacking" the system to swipe high speed tethered data. These aren't naive amateurs; they are clever hackers who are willfully stealing for their own selfish gain."